My iOS App Picks for 2014 — eBook Readers

It’s that time of year again — the year is end­ing, com­ing to a close. And we often take time to look back at things we’ve done. In my case, I thought I’d look back at the iOS apps that have most engaged me over the last year.

I’ll basic­ally select a ‘win­ner’ and a ‘run­ner up’, and give a few reas­ons why the app cap­tured my atten­tion and interest.

So, without fur­ther pre­amble, here’s my first cat­egory and selec­tions:

eBook reader

Mar­vin is new to me this year and it’s an excel­lent example of what an eBook read­er should be. Pre­vi­ously I’d used Stanza, but it was acquired by Amazon and not updated — and has since been removed from the app store. Mar­vin is a mar­velous replace­ment.

For Mar­vin, there’s both a free and paid ver­sion — I’d recom­mend get­ting the free one to start and see if you need all the excel­lent fea­tures of the paid ver­sion.

One of the big fea­tures that I look for in any eBook read­er is Cal­ibre integ­ra­tion. Cal­ibre is a pro­gram that runs on a com­puter and man­ages your eBook lib­rary. It has a serv­er com­pon­ent, which means that with appro­pri­ate eBook read­ers, you can log into Cal­ibre, browse through your entire eBook lib­rary, and down­load eBooks to your device.

With Mar­vin, it’s a simple mat­ter to log into the lib­rary, select the eBook, then down­load it over WiFi. No wires, no muss, no fuss.

SHARE
— Vir­tu­ally all the con­tent you see, cre­ate and find can be expor­ted and shared
— All expor­ted con­tent can be opened in web browsers and word pro­cessors for fur­ther ref­er­ence
— Share status, pro­gress, pic­tures, text selec­tions and high­lights to Face­book and Twit­ter